Anna Maria Antoinette D’Addario Deep in Their Roots, All Flowers Keep the Light, curated by Simone Azzoni e Francesca Marra
Giordana Citti/Annalaura Tamburrini Anima Naturae, curated by Marco Rapaccini
Vernissage: Saturday 4 May 2024 at 6.30 pm
Man and the environment are part of an ecosystem in which fragility, temporality and persistence, slowness and sedimentation coexist. The two projects that the Centro Luigi Di Sarro exhibits trace the line of this dialogue on the ephemeral memory of the relationship between man and nature.
Anna Maria Antoinette D’Addario is an Italian-Australian photographic artist, writer and book maker. Her work revolves around the investigation and resurrection of memory and our emotional connection to place. She has published two artist books, Farewell Angelina (2018) and Deep in Their Roots, All Flowers Keep the Light (ceiba Editions 2019). Anna holds a MFA in Fine Art, Sydney College of the Arts, and is a current PhD candidate at Monash University in Fine Art.
This work began as a response to the sudden and violent death of my sister in 2015 and gradually became a path to live and make sense of life again. It was an act of resistance, an attempt to speak in the face of silence. With her murder, time stopped, all became fractured and fragmented. I, together with my mother and all who loved her, were drawn into an obscure world without her, a world broken and changed.
As children my sister and I spent hours in the bush, and by the ocean. After her loss I sought to regain the connection to the landscape that existed in my memory and reflected our origins, a desire to be clear again in my understanding of it. Landscape endures. It takes and hold its form. Landscape speaks in my work, in part, in its resilience, of survival in the present and for survival of the past; it holds memories; it speaks of connections, but it also speaks of violence and irretrievable loss. It represents then, continuity and also absence, it stands for what can never be lost and for all that has been lost; it embodies trauma and it embodies endu- rance, the persistence of which no violence can erase.
My sister was thirty-five when her life was taken. Her future has been lost and the past and our childhood has been altered and affected. The knowledge and weight of our history has only one side now, one gaze, and one recollection. Here I accompany my sister in story, photos of myself as a child mirror and connect with those of Daniela. We break silence together, identities entwined.
This project was conceived through the creation of an artist’s book, Farewell Angelina, and a successive photo book, Deep in Their Roots, All Flower Keep the Light. (Anna Maria Antoinette D’Addario)
What is then left of the landscape when the people who loved it, lived in it, are no longer there? Powerlessness and absence do not turn a place into a view, a space into a landscape.
Representation, which attempts to repair the trauma of loss, cannot be a layer of memory above others.
“My spaces are fragile: time will consume them, destroy them: nothing will no longer resemble what it was,” wrote Georges Perec. If memory can erase, trauma can instead hold the glimpse of what was. Memories reinvent, narrate, betray, trauma instead fixes. The fracture pierces the veil of the landscape, not repairs it. The violent tear of loss cannot but lacerate representation – even of the usual landscape – and open the Montale’s wonder. (Simone Azzoni)
Giordana Citti was born in Rome in 1993. In 2012, she began attending evening courses in photography and darkroom printing at Officine Fotografiche, training with te- acher Samantha Marenzi. After graduating in “History and conservation of the artistic and archaeological heritage”, he decided to devote himself full-time to photography by enrolling in the Biennial School of Photography at Officine Fotografiche Roma. He first became a darkroom assistant and later refined his professional training by starting an internship at Davide di Gianni’s Digid’a Art Prints workshop in Rome. He currently teaches darkroom courses at Officine Fotografiche, attends the Faculty of “Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage”, concerning the restoration of book and photographic material, at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and works in the photographic archives of the National Film Library of the Experimental Centre of Cinematography in Rome.In 2021 he was among the ten artists selected to take part in the photography masterclass Contatto of the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and TWM Factory. He has taken part in many exhibitions in recent years: Of Analogica on the occasion of Fotoleggendo (2016), Female in March, a group exhibition of female photographers at Lanificio (2018), Temporary Wall, an open air exhibition at Fotoleggendo (2018), The Family of no Man for Arles cosmos (2018), In Praise of Imperfection at Fondamenta gallery (2019), GeneraHumana on the occasion of the Genera Festival (2019) in Cister- nino, Walk With Women on the occasion of the MedFilmFestival in Rome (2019), Hier, mais aussi aujourd’hui, solo exhibition at the Fusion Art Gallery in Turin (2020), The Darkroom Projet Otto, group exhibition curated by Luciano Corvaglia, at the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in San Martino al Cimino (2020), Contatto, at WeGil (2021), MarteLive, national finalist Biennale MarteLive at Planet Roma (2021), Premio Daniela Semprebene, exhibition of the winners of the visual arts sections MarteLive Lazio 2021, at the ART G. A.P. Gallery, Rome (2022), Tevere Art Gallery/Arles 2022, collective photographic exhibition curated by Luciano Corvaglia on the occasion of Les Rencontres d’Arles, in “Arles Exposition-Off”(2022), MarteLive: Lo spettacolo totale, national finalist Biennale MarteLive, at Qube, Rome (2022), Venere Vs Medusa on the occasion of Paratissima, at Cavallerizza Torino (2023).
Annalaura Tamburrini was born in Fasano in 1994. She trained as a photographer at the “Officine Fotografiche” school in Rome where, during the period from 2015 to 2019, she deepened her knowledge of darkroom practices, black and white printing and ancient printing techniques under the guidance of teacher Samantha Marenzi. During this path, she has the opportunity to exhibit and curate various photographic projects within the local independent scene. In June 2017, during the international photo- graphy festival ‘FotoLeggendo’, she participates in the group exhibition ‘Analogica 2017’. In February 2018, she presents the project “Sono una strega” at the Cinema Palazzo Occupato in Rome as part of the group exhibition “Tecne”. In May 2018, she co-curates the exhibition cycle “Analogies”, presented at the Officine Fotografiche school in Rome. In the same month, she exhibited the project ‘Sono una strega’ within the same cycle. Also in May 2018, she co-curates the exhibition ‘Nel corpo dell’immagine’, part of the international photography festival ‘FotoLeggendo’ in Rome. In February 2019, he took part in the group exhibition ‘In Praise of Imperfection’ with the project ‘Moral to Censorship’ at the Inside Art Gallery in Rome. In August 2019, she curates the international group exhibition ‘GeneraHumana’ at the Torre Civica in Cisternino. From 2020, after moving to Turin, she collaborates with the cultural association Mostro Collettivo. From 2023 she is represented by the Raw Messina gallery in Rome and collaborates actively with Gabriele Stabile. In January 2024 she exhibits in Bologna, in the context of the Arte Fiera fuoriisalone, during the Booming Art Show in an exhibition curated by Raw Messina, entitled ‘La vita sognata dagli angeli’.
The Anima Naturae project aims to portray the contrast between the fleeting es- sence of humanity and the timeless spirit of nature.
Each diptych pairs a weathered stone portrait, bearing the marks of time, mold, and the relentless forces of weathering, with an untouched photograph capturing the pristine landscape. The stone portrait serves as a tangible testament to the vulnerability of the human soul over time, narrating a story of transience conti- nually shaped by transformative elements in its natural habitat. On the flip side, earth unfolds as the epicenter of an eternal animation of nature, presenting an ideal and idyllic realm that underscores primordial soul and spirituality, untouched by human manipulation.
Through this visual reflection, viewers are invited to contemplate the duality of fragility and strength, transience and persistence, fostering a profound aware- ness of the intricate connections between humanity and the broader living world. Anima Naturae emerges as a conceptual bridge, blurring the boundaries betwe- en human finiteness and the boundless vitality of nature, illustrating how, despite human endeavors, we inevitably yield to the unstoppable power of the natural world, prompting reflection on the sustainability of our interactions with the planet. All photographs are made with black and white analog film [portraits with 135mm, landscapes with 120mm]. (Giordana Citti and Annalaura Tamburrini)
